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GRMD SRMY OF THE REPUBLIC, 



Chickering Hall, New York, 



September 20, 1881, 



Hon. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. 



AT.BANY: 

THE PRKSS CO., PRINTERS, iS REAVER ST. 
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ADDRESS 



illliL SERVICES OE JMS A. GiEFlELP, 



GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC, 



Chickering Hall, New York, 

•) September 26, 1881, 



Hon. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. 



ALBANY: 

THE PRESS CO., PRINTERS, 1 8 BEAVER ST. 
1881. 



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ADDRESS 

AT THE 

MEMORIAL SERVICES OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

BY THE 

GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC, 

AT Phickering. J^all, J^ew yoRK, 

BY 

Hon. CHSUNGEY M. DEPEW, 



My Friends : 

We have met together many times in the long years 
past on occasions serious and trifling, sad and joyful, for 
the hot discussion of politics, for the purpose of com- 
memorating historical and patriotic events, and to dtrew 
with flowers and eulogiums the graves of our heroic 
dead; but never before have we assembled when we 
were only the units of universal and all-embracing 
grief. The world is in tears. The sun, in its course, 
has for the past two months greeted with its morning 
rays a never ending succession of kneeling millions 
supplicating the heavenly throne to spare the life of 



4 

General Garfield, and during the last few days it has 
set upon them bowed in sorrow for his death. This 
intense interest has been limited by neither boundaries 
nor nationalities. It has belted the globe with mourn- 
ing. Why has this calamity touched the chords of 
miiversal sympathy ? Heroes and statesmen have died 
before, but never before have all civilized people felt 
the loss their own. The glory of the battle-field has 
mingled exultation with the soldier's agony. Statesmen 
have closed a long and distinguished career, but the 
loss has been relieved by the reflection that such is the 
common lot of all. Lincoln's murder was recognized 
as the expiring stroke of a dying cause. The assassina- 
tion of him who was the saviour of Holland, and the 
hope of the liberty of his time was felt to be the fruit 
of implacable feud and religious strife ; but the shot at 
Garfield was the most causeless, purposeless and wicked 
crime of the century. No section, no party, no faction 
desired his death. It had no accessories in public ven- 
geance or private malice. The President was a strong, 
brave, pure man in the prime of his jDOwers ; the trusted 
executive of fifty millions of people; the title to his 
office unquestioned, and the nation unanimous in the 
purpose that he should develop his policy and fulfill his 
mission. Such a life and career so ruthlessly broken 
arouses horror and sympathy. But the love, reverence 



and sadness of this hour is due to the fact that the man 
himself, in his strength and weakness, in his struggles 
and triumphs, in his friendships and enmities, in his 
relations to mother, wife and children, and in his battle 
with death, was the best type of manhood. He was 
not one of those historical heroes, with the human ele- 
ment so far eliminated that, while we admire the char- 
acter, we rejoice that it exists only in books and on 
canvass, but a man like ourselves, with like passions 
and feelings, but possessed of such greatness and good- 
ness, that the higher we estimated him, the nearer and 
dearer he became to us. In America and Europe he is 
recognized as an illustrious example of the results of 
free institutions. His career shows what can be accom- 
plished where all avenues are open and exertion is un- 
trammelled. Our ainials afford no such incentive to 
youth as does his life, and it will become one of the 
republic's household stories. No boy in poverty almost 
hopeless, thirsting for knowledge, meets an obstacle 
which Garfield did not experience and overcome. No 
youth despairing in darkness feels a gloom which he 
did not dispel. No young man filled with honorable 
ambition can encounter a difficulty which he did not 
meet and surmount. For centuries to come great men 
will trace their rise from humble origins to the inspira- 
tions of that lad who learned to read by the light of a 



6 

pine-knot in a log cabin ; who, ragged and barefooted, 
trudged along the tow-path of the canal, and without 
ancestry behind to impel him forward, without money 
or affluent relations, without friends or assistance, by 
faith in himself and in God became the most scholarly 
and best equipped statesman of his time, one of the 
foremost soldiers of his country, the best debater in the 
strongest of deliberative bodies, the leader of his party 
and the Chief Magistrate of fifty millions of people 
before he was fifty years of age. We are not here to 
question the ways of Providence. Our prayers were 
not answered as we desired, though the volume and 
fervor of our importunity seemed resistless; but, already, 
behind the partially lifted veil we see the fruits of the 
sacrifice. Old wounds are healed and fierce feuds for- 
gotten. Vengeance and passion which have survived 
the best statesmanship of twenty years are dispelled by 
a common sorrow. Love follows sympathy. Over this 
open grave the cypress and willow are indissolubly 
entwined, and into it are buried all sectional differences 
and hatreds. The North and the South rise from 
bended knees to embrace in the brotherhood of a com- 
mon people and reunited country. Not this alone, but 
the humanity of the civilized world has been quickened 
and elevated, and the English-speaking people are 
nearer to-day in peace and unity than ever before. 



There is no language in which petitions have not arisen 
for Garfield's life, and no clime where tears have not 
fallen for his death. The Queen of the proudest of 
nations, for the first time in our recollection, brushes 
aside the formalities of diplomacy, and descending from 
the throne, speaks for her own and the hearts of all her 
people in the cable to the afflicted wife, which says : 
" Myself and my children mourn with you." 

It was my privilege to talk for hours with General 
Garfield during his famous trip to the New York con- 
ference in the late canvass, and yet it was not conver- 
sation or discussion. He fastened upon me all the 
powers of inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness, and ab- 
sorbed all I had learned in twenty years of the politics 
of this state. Under this restless and resistless craving 
for information, he drew upon all the resources of the 
libraries, gathered all the contents of the newspapers 
and sought and sounded the opinions of all around him, 
and in his broad, clear mind the vast mass was so 
assimilated and tested that when he spoke or acted it 
was accepted as true and wise. And yet it was by the 
gush and warmth of old college-chum ways and not by 
the arts of the inquisitor that when he had gained he 
never lost a friend. His strength was in ascertaining 
and expressing the average sense of his audience. 
I saw him at the Chicago convention, and whenever 



8 

that popular assemblage seemed drifting into hopeless 
confusion his tall form commanded attention and his 
clear voice and clearer utterances instantly gave the 
accepted solution. 

I arrived at his house at Mentor in the early morn- 
ing following the disaster in Maine. While all about 
him were in panic he saw only a danger which must 
and could be repaired. " It is no use bemoaning the 
past," he said, " the past has no uses except for its les- 
sons." Business disposed of, he threw aside all re- 
straint, and for hours his speculations and theories upon 
philosophy, government, education, eloquence; his criti- 
cism of books, his reminiscences of men and events 
have made that one of the white-letter days of my life. 
At Chickamauga he won his major-general's commis- 
sion. On the anniversary of the battle he died. I shall 
never forget his description of the fight ; so modest, yet 
graphic. It is imprinted on my memory as the most 
glorious battle-picture words ever painted. He thought 
the greatest calamity which could befall a man was to 
lose ambition. I said to him, " General, did you never 
in your earlier struggle have that feeling I have so 
often met with, when you would have compromised 
your whole future for a certainty, and, if so, what ? " 
" Yes," said he, " I remember well when I would have 
been willing to exchange all the possibilities of my life 



9 

for the certainty of a position as a successful teacher." 
Though he died neither a school principal nor college 
professor, and they seera humble achievements com- 
pared with what he did, his memory will instruct while 
time endures. 

His long and dreadful sickness lifted the roof from 
his house and family circle, and his relations as son, 
husband and father stood revealed in the broadest sun- 
light of publicity. The picture endeared him wherever 
is understood the full significance of that matchless 
word "home." When he stood by the Capitol, just 
pronounced the President of the greatest and most 
powerful of republics, the exultation of the hour found 
its expression in a kiss upon the lips of his mother. 
For weeks in distant Ohio she sat by the gate, watching 
for the hurrying feet of the messenger bearing the tele- 
grams of hope or despair. His last conscious act was 
to write a letter of cheer and encouragement to that 
mother, and when the blow fell she illustrated the spirit 
she had instilled in him. There were no rebellious 
murmurings against the Divine dispensation, only in 
utter agony : " I have no wish to live longer ; I will 
join him soon; the Lord's will be done." When Dr. 
Bliss told him he had a bare chance of recovery, 
" Then," said he, " we will take that chance, doctor." 
When asked if he suffered pain, he answerc'd: *' If you 



10 

can imagine a trip-hammer crashing on your body, or 
cramps, such as you have in the water, a thousand 
times intensified, you can have some idea of what I 
suffer." And yet during those eighty-one days was 
heard neither groan nor complaint. Always brave and 
cheerful, he answered the fear of the surgeons with the 
remark : " I have faced death before, I am not afraid to 
meet him now; " and again, *' I have strength enough 
left to meet him yet" — and he could whisper to the 
Secretary of the Treasury an inquiry about the success 
of the funding scheme and ask the Postmaster-General 
how much public money he had saved. 

His first thought when borne to the White House 
was not for himself, but for his wife sick at Elberon. 
He sent her an assuring message, bidding her come, 
received her with a cheerful and smiling welcome, and 
when she had left the room he said to the wife of a 
Cabinet Minister, " How does Crete bear it ? " " Like 
the wife of a true soldier," was the reply. "Ah, the 
dear little woman ! " he exclaimed ; " I would rather 
die than that this should cause a relapse to her." 
Scanning with loving eyes her watchful and anxious 
face weeks afterwards, he drew down her head and 
whispered, " Go out, dear, and drive before the sun gets 
too hot ; I would go with you if I didn't have so much 
business to attend to ; you will, I am sure, excuse me." 



11 

Forbidden to talk, he established with his life-long 
friends and constant watchers, General Swaira. and 
Colonel Rockwell, a system by which, in the knowledge 
gained by the intimacy of years, single words stood for 
ideas. 

Williams College Commencement, to which he was 
going when he was shot, was mentioned. The old 
familiar Alumni assemblage became present to his 
mind, and what were they saying of him? " Tender- 
ness?" he said to Rockwell. "Measureless," was the 
reply, and he had gathered the spirit of that memora- 
ble meeting. In answer to an inquiry General Swaim 
said to me: "The most hopeful, courageous and calm 
observer of the case is General Garfield himself He 
has so completely eliminated his personality, that he 
thinks and acts as if General Garfield had unusual 
and extraordinary opportunities to study the condition 
of the President of the United States, and an uncom- 
mon duty to preserve his life." 

As he lay in the cottage by the sea, looking out upon 
the ocean, whose broad expanse was in harmony with 
his own grand nature, and heard the beating of the 
waves upon the shore, and felt the pulsations of millions 
of hearts against his chamber door, there was no pos- 
ing for history and no preparation of la.st words for 
dramatic efiect. With simple naturalness he gave the 



12 



military salute to the sentinel gazing at his window, 
and that soldier returning it in tears will proudly carry 
its memory to his dying day, and transmit it to his 
children. The voice of his faithful wife came from her 
devotions in another room, singing, "Guide me, Thou 
Great Jehovah!" "Listen," he cries, "is not that 
glorious?" and in a few hours Heaven's portals opened 
and uphorne upon such prayers as never before wafted 
spirit above he entered the presence of God. It is the 
alleviation of all sorrow, public or private, that close 
upon it press the duties of and to the living. 

The whole nation unites in smoothing the path-way 
of the revered and beloved mother, and caring for the 
noble wife and her children. But, as citizens, let us 
remove from our institutions the incentives to assassina- 
tion. The President is of one school, the Vice-President 
of another. The President of the Senate next in suc- 
cession is of one party, the Speaker of the House of 
the other. A million of needy or ambitious men be- 
siege the President for the hundred thousand places in 
his gift. In a change is a perpetual opportunity to 
retrieve a failure, and murder forever lurks in this 
concentration and distribution of patronage. Let the 
President be the constitutional ruler of the republic 
and the civil service placed on a business basis. Let us 
render our cordial support to him who under these try 



13 



ing circumstances succeeds to this high office. " God 
reigns and the Government at Washington still lives," 
was the Christian soldier's shout with which General 
Garfield stopj^ed the maddened mob when Lincoln was 
killed. Arthur is President. He needs the confidence 
and encouragement of the people, and will prove 
worthy of the trust which has devolved upon him. 
The tolling bells, the minute guns upon land and sea, 
the muffled drums and funeral hymns fill the air while 
our chief is borne to his last resting place. The busy 
world is stilled for the hour when loving hands are pre- 
paring his grave. A stately shaft will rise, overlook- 
ing the lake and commemorating his deeds. But his 
fame will not live alone in marble or brass. His story 
will be treasured and kept warm in the hearts of mil- 
lions for generations to come, and boys hearing it from 
their mothers will be fired with nobler ambitions. To 
his countrymen he will always be a typical American 
citizen, soldier and statesman. A year ago and not a 
thousand people of the Old World had ever heard his 
name, and now there is scarcely a thousand who do not 
mourn his loss. The peasant loves him because from 
the same humble lot he became one of the mighty of 
earth, and sovereigns respect him because in his royal 
gifts and kingly nature God made him their equal. 



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